10K Subscribers = ¥30K/Month in Ads. Why Keep Going? ¥100K Brand Deals and Own Products
Web-development YouTuber Shogo published his income at 10,000 subscribers. Ad revenue averaged about ¥30K/month (with 9 months of actuals disclosed), and his own conclusion was that ads alone cannot pay the bills. The real earners were brand deals at ¥100K per video and his own products, which bring in dozens of times the ad revenue.
This is a translation of the Japanese original. The Japanese version and cited primary sources are authoritative for all figures.
The Published Numbers
| Item | Figure |
|---|---|
| Ad revenue | ~¥30K/month on average (October 2020–June 2021, 9 months of monthly actuals: ¥21K–41K) |
| RPM (revenue per 1,000 views) | ¥800–1,200 = roughly ¥1 per view (a high-rate genre) |
| Subscribers | 5,000 (October 2020) → 10,000 (June 2021) → ~14,500 (2025) |
| Genre | Web development / freelancing |
| Brand deals | ~¥100K per video (at least one inquiry a month) |
| Own products | Sales revenue is dozens of times the ad revenue |
The Business in Brief
Shogo is a freelance web developer who runs a YouTube channel sharing his hands-on professional knowledge. Even though web development and freelancing sit in the highest RPM (ad-rate) tier, his ad revenue at 10,000 subscribers hovered around ¥30K a month — he calls it “pocket money,” in so many words.
The Real Revenue Lives Outside the Ads
What makes this record interesting is that it breaks YouTube’s revenue structure down into layers.
- Ad revenue (¥30K/month): Proportional to views. Even in one of the highest-rate genres, this is the level
- Brand deals (¥100K per video): Even at 10,000 subscribers, an audience with purchasing power brings at least one inquiry a month
- Own products (dozens of times the ads): Used as a funnel into his own courses and services, the revenue jumps by an order of magnitude
In other words, YouTube functions not as “a medium that earns through ads” but as an audience-building machine for earning trust and selling something else.
What to Take From This
The common belief that “10,000 subscribers = serious income” is an illusion, at least where ad revenue is concerned. A measured ¥30K/month in the highest-rate genre implies that an average genre (RPM ¥100–300) would yield a few thousand to ¥10K a month at the same subscriber count. The gap with the gadget channel earning ¥166K/month at 10K subscribers is the difference in the product of views times rates.
The correct P&L for YouTube is computed across three layers: ads + brand deals + own products. Ads alone fall far short of web development’s professional day rates, but measured as “total income via the channel,” including deals and products, the return on the investment in publishing holds up. This is the same playbook as Hitode’s “the person is the moat” — using media as a trust-building machine.
Related Cases
Sources
This article summarizes and analyzes the public sources above. Please refer to the primary sources for details.